Saturday, July 14, 2007

Day 1 on the job with the Paul Campaign

I flew into Baltimore, arriving a little after 8:30 in the morning on Friday, after a long delay in Seattle. I knew I couldn't get in my house before 5:30 pm so I planned to hang out at the office, meet the staff and try to get on top of what I needed to know for Monday when the boss returns from the weekend trip across California. I was lucky to happen across a fellow traveler needing to get into Arlington so I split the $100 cab fare and soon arrived at the office.

Mind you, at this point I had been up for about 36 hours (minus a couple hours of uncomfortable, baby-screaming, preteen-kicking-my-chair, stewardess-pestering-me, fat-lady-next-to-me-reading, half-sleep) and I was dressed like, well, like people do when they travel...comfortably.

I got to the office, which hasn't yet caught up to the exploding size of the campaign (we move into a new, larger office next week), to find the staff of young, eager pols and volunteers diligently working on Dr. Paul's behalf. Just as I was settling in, the word came up from our Communications Director that CBS was on their way. Panicked, I sprang for my suitcase in an effort to grab a shirt more appropriate than the coffee-stained ESPN tee I wore on the plane. I had no sooner gotten a dress shirt out of my bags, onto my back and my be-jeaned lower half under a desk when a CBS camera was in my face as I boldly pretended to have something to do. Joie Chen flitted around the room asking questions and doing other cute little reporter things for a while before her and her crew departed with video tape of me with bed hair in hand.

I relaxed and settled into doing some actual work when the word came down that Dr. Paul had made a comment on the Alex Jones radio show that could have been misconstrued, by those that choose to misconstrue such things, as an endorsement of Cindy Sheehan's prediction that the US government might stage an attack to justify war with Iran. We gave the Communications Director some anti-seizure medication and returned to work.

After work, my new roommate picked me up and took me to my new digs. Nice...hardwood floors good! I ordered a pizza, drank some tea and passed out for the next 13 hours.